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Forces – levers and pulleys

This week, we started our new mini-topic: Forces. We’re focusing on levers and pulleys.

To begin with, we used some paper and a toy car to figure out what we we already know about forces. Help at home by asking your child what forces act on a toy car or a falling piece of paper.

After that, we investigated levers and pulleys. Levers and pulleys are essentially a mechanism to exert a larger amount of force with less effort. To demonstrate this we did a little experiment:

That’s right. Despite weighing less than half what I do, Noah was able to lift me up. Ask your child how this works?

We also thought about more common examples of levers and pulleys – ones we might use in everyday life like scissors (ask your child about how were going to remember the silent ‘c’ in the word scissors) and lifts.

Tomorrow, we’ll begin working on a little project, in which we’ll apply our knowledge of forces, levers and pulleys: (attempting) making a rube goldberg machine.

02 December 2016

Hyphens

This week’s spelling activity focuses on the use of hyphens. Children should sort the compound adjectives below in to words that need a hyphen and those that don’t. They need to be careful though – I’ve tried to catch them out.

man-eating         actionpacked      heavy-metal        good-luck

hand-picked        over-sleep                    mine-field            tip-toed

state-of-the-art    under-whelmed  re-organise                   re-do

reignite                cooperate           coown                 foot-ball

Next, children should add two more of their own to each column.

02 December 2016

We’ve been exploring words ending in …tious and …cious for our spelling activity and next week these are the spellings we’ll be tested on.

• vicious
• malicious
• suspicious
• precious
• conscious
• delicious
• nutritious
• surreptitious
• conscientious
• cautious
• infectious
• fictitious
• ambitious

Ten words will be tested on Friday which could be from this list or could be in one of these word’s word family.

Word families are a great way to practise spelling: infect, infectious, infecting, infected, disinfect, disinfectant. Not only do I have to write the spelling pattern over and over again, but it also highlights that there’s a ‘t’ in all of these words therefore, I’ll use a ‘t’ for the …tious spelling.

02 December 2016

This week’s Practice Makes Perfect homework is in response to a SPaG test we’ve done this week and the mistakes we’ve picked out and addressed as a class.

Work your way through the questions, remembering what we’ve gone over together. See whether you can explain your answers clearly to an adult as this will not only prove that you understand but also improve your understanding. As a class, we’ll look through these questions together on Thursday 08 December, 2016.

02 December 2016

This week’s Talk Time homework focuses on the 8Rs for learning: reflect, remember, resilience,responsibility, safe risk, resourceful, respond, readiness.

We’ve come to the end of our SEAL theme which focuses on these Rs so it’s now time to engage our reflection skills and decide which we’re good at and which we need to improve on. Think about each R in turn and decide whether this is a strength or a weakness for you. Then consider how you can maintain those which are strengths and improve those which are weaknesses.

We’ll discuss our strengths and weaknesses on Thursday 08 December so make sure you’ve made notes and have your book for then.

Homework review

Thanks to those parents who joined us for our weekly homework review. As I expected, there were a number of brilliant homeworks, celebrating the great learning we did throughout STEM week.

Here are a few of our favourites.

Great job, Year 6!

Sports stars

As part of our involvement with the Leeds North East School Sport Partnership and Active Schools, we have recently entered two sporting competitions.  A huge well done to all children who took part.  For a few, this was their first opportunity to represent our school.

Leeds North East Primary Schools Sportshall Athletics

Fifteen pupils from Year 4, 5 and 6, took part in this action-packed competition, at Allerton Grange, comprising of many field and track events.  It’s always a well-contested event and the children competed well against other local schools.

• ‘I enjoyed everything I did.  Our team was very positive.’
• ‘It was a great experience that wasn’t too competitive.  I loved it!’
• ‘I enjoyed the competition because there were lots of events to choose and do.’

Thank you to Mrs Bald and Mrs Russell for taking the children to this event.

Leeds North East Primary Schools Cross Country Festival

Eighteen pupils participated in the Leeds North East Primary Schools Cross Country Festival at Cardinal Heenan.  There were over 650 young people taking part in the races and over 100 pupils in each race.

A particular well done to Grace and Megan who came 7th and 10th in their Year 5 girls race.  Also, children commented on the resilience of Ripley who took a fall in the mud but got himself up and then continued to overtake many other runners!

• ”I thought it was good because it was different and my mum used to do cross country too.’
• ‘It was really good because even if you don’t like running too much, like me, you still had a fun time.’

As always, we thank staff and parents who helped with these events.

School Saving Club paying in session

Our next paying in date for School Saving Club account holders is Thursday 08 December 3.15-3.45pm. If you can’t make this date, the next one will be on Thursday 02 February at 3.15-3.45pm.

Children must be accompanied to the sessions.

Alternatively, you can bring money to the office in a sealed envelope marked School Saving Club for the attention of Miss Hale.

School Saving Club accounts can still be opened.  Please ask at the office for an application form.

Children who are in currently in Year 3 will have their account credited by Leeds City Council with £10 once opened.

Physical activity – the facts

In August 2016, the Government released its Childhood Obesity Strategy. This document outlines actions which will address the rising rates of childhood obesity.

Yorkshire Sport Foundation have produced the following poster with statistics and key information from the strategy.

We continue to monitor and improve our physical activity provision (see our current PE Provision Plan (pe-and-sport-premium-2016-2017) and our previous PE Provision Plan (pe-and-sport-premium-2015-2016).

Childline – on the web

This year is the 30th anniversary of Childline. It’s often thought that Childline is just a phone number, but their website is full of useful information in different formats. If you haven’t looked at the site, check it out, and encourage your child to visit, too. Remind children that they don’t have to be be in distress to find the Childline information helpful.

Why do children contact Childline?

The two most common reasons children contact Childline are low mood/unhappiness and family relationships. Childline made 4,005 referrals in 2015/16 on behalf of 3,609 children to external agencies, a 7% increase in referrals since 2014/15. There was a 49% increase in referrals about mental health since 2014/15. (Source: How safe are our children 2016, NSPCC, 2016)